Zanzibar

We’re back! Although some of you may think that we are suffering silently on the far side of the world, those of you with any skills of observation will quickly realize we are living lives of the spoiled rotten! Although this includes many day to day joys and blessings, one of the biggest reasons we are so lucky is that our lives and jobs allow us to travel to some of the most amazing places in the world. This month Bryan and I are celebrating four years of marriage and in honor of the occasion we decided to take a bit of a vacation on the island of Zanzibar off the coast of Tanzania. (Yeah, look it up. You will never feel sorry for us again.) Oh, my friends...

It. was. Wonderful.

We spent the first couple of days exploring the historic city of Stone Town. The town (at least the “historic” part of it) is a maze of old forts, museums, churches and mosques sectioned off by spider-web like - alleys full of antique stores, curio shops, fruit vendors and fish markets. We had a lot of fun just walking around looking at old things and eating copious amounts of sea-food in the open air market at night. The next five days we bummed out at a beach resort on the far North-Eastern part of the Island. It’s really good that Bryan and I are together in this because he keeps me from being a complete vegetable with a book by the pool, and I keep him from being fried at the end of the week from playing too hard. So together we swam, read, kayaked, played cards, scuba dove (dived?), napped, sailed, ate (and ate and ate), body surfed and slept. All week long. We were lucky with the weather because even though it was rainy season (which meant better prices and fewer people) we had mostly sunny days. In fact the only day it rained was the day we had decided to go scuba diving. And then it really ended up being something more akin to a tropical monsoon. I think we got wetter at the surface than we did under it. But we really did have a couple great dives and see some beautiful things (despite a decompression stop at five meters in which I threw up under water – that was a new one for me!).

Another blessing was a quick stop in at my parent’s house on the mainland on our way back home to say goodbye to my baby sister who is heading off to college in a few weeks. As sad as we are to be that much further away from her very soon, we are so excited for her and can’t wait to see her again at Christmas.

Bryan and I got home yesterday and are so happy to be here. The rains have started up so the world around us is in the early flushes of green and we actually slept with a sheet over us last night! We were so happy to see our teammates as well as Asad and Nimir, who I still think must be the most spoiled animals in this country. So now, it’s back to the daily grind, but we are back feeling a bit revived. It is good to be home – bucket baths and all.